my son is a few days over four months, but a big boy for his age. He is completely breasfed so far, he gets about two bottles a day though - also br___tmilk. I am going to introduce solids, but I'm not sure how to go about it. Can any of you ladies, who breasfeed tell me how you went about it. What you did first - rice cereal in the morning? how much of it and does the cereal subsitute a feeding or is it in addition to? Should I give him some cereal and then a bottle right after or wait? how long do they get only rice cereal for? And also is it just once a day or twice - once in the am and once in the pm? I know that it's a lot of questions, but I'm really not sure what to do, with my first son, he was a preemie, so we went about things a lot differently. He was such a tiny baby and he developed stomach problems becasue I gave him solids too soon - I don't want to make the same mistake twice, but it's been over 10 years since I've done it all, so any help would be truly appreciated!

I'm not a dr but I will tell u what we do with dd... I bf her for a while then supplement the rest of her meal with cereal that is mixed wth b___st milk and gerber organic baby apple juice... I supplement with every b___stfeeding b/c she gets really hungry (and the cereal helps her acid reflux) I have also heard that if ur baby is going overweight then cutting down a little on b___st milk and adding cereal will help (i don't know if that's true but a lot of other mothers I talk to said their drs made them add cereal b/c their lo's are too big) I didn't know b___st fed babies could get too big but hey like I said I'm not a dr... our dd was not a fan of the cereal at first once we added the apple juice she took to it...she also eats small amounts of gerbers first stages organic apple sauce, peaches, pears, & bannanas. be careful of constipation though our dd got it after the first few days and was miserable (thats originally why we chose to add apple juice since it loosens bowels) I would start off with one feeding... we started at night...and dd got supr full and fell asleep and it was the first night she slept all night! then we slowly started adding more feedings...and now she will stop bf'ing to get cereal! good luck and its actually very fun once u get to start solids! we don't use a spoon though (too messy) we us a dropper from the mylicon drops and she loves eating it that way...also since u said u started too soon with ur other son my dd is only 2 months but her dr said once she stopped the auto eject wth her tongue(where they push everything out of their mouth with their tongue) that she was ready and she stopped, also her reflux is really really bad and we were told to try a little cereal, from there we decided to slowly expand to other foods (only fruits in small batches) and shes doing great! I don't know how long they take cereal for my box says they can use it all the way to 4 years old...but I imagine once u get to more foods or second stage foods and adding in regular food you'd prolly stop gl hope this answered ur questions and sorry its so long... gl!

Hey Teska there are a lot of books and stuff about this but i will tell you what my dh and i did with my dd. When it seemed like she was ready for solids we started with rice cereal mixed with b___st milk, but just a few bites worth b/c it took her about a week to get it, once she did we started to make up a few ounces at a time. I would b___stfeed her about 30-45min. before she would eat so that she wasn't so hungry she was too fusterated to eat and not so full that she wasn't interested. We started in the evening and once she got it we did the morning and the evening and i continued to b___stfeed on demand, after a while i noticed i was b___stfeeding her less. Now we are at the point where we are adding new food every 4-5 days to her diet. So it is rice cereal mixed with applesauce in the morning probably about 2 oz. and a veggie in the evening, about 4 oz. Just a note, we didn't start until she was closer to 6 months, but starting with rice cereal and moving to veggies and then some fruit within the next few weeks should be fine. I have a baby cook book that recomends, for 4-6 months ,veggies such as sweet potatoes, acorn squash, sweet peas, green beans, apples, peaches, peaches, plums, and pears, all pureed of course.

Teska - did your doctor recommend that you introduce solids already? From everything I've read, one of the main reasons for food allergies is introducing solids too early, before their stomachs have developed enough to handle them. Most babies don't "need" anything other than b___stmilk for at least the first 6 months. My ds is big (like 90% percentile pretty consistently) but our ped. recommended waiting until 6 months, which we did. Check out wholesomebabyfood dot com (I'm not affiliated or anything - it's just a really helpful site!) for more info about introducing solids.

thanks for all the responses, Val - yes my ped said it was alright to give him cereal, I was going to give him some and keep him just on cereal for about a month or so. He's just a big boy and gets hungry a lot, so we were going to supplement it a little bit. We acctually tired it last night and he did pretty good. I think I will hold off on any type of a jarred food until he gets a little bit older.